


You're Not Supposed to Play With Your Food

by meiyamie



Series: April Fool's Prompts 2018 [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Comedy, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, silliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 10:00:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14133741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meiyamie/pseuds/meiyamie
Summary: Kageyama and Hinata face their next great challenge: making a bento for their home economics class.





	You're Not Supposed to Play With Your Food

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tuples](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuples/gifts).



> -Standard disclaimers apply. Haikyuu!! isn't mine, though I feel that those boys are my sons. Not a cent was earned from this work of fan fiction.  
> -I had a break before April Fool's and made a call among friends for fic prompts. This prompt comes from Tuples: "KageHina bento". Here's my take on it. May be a little something for the HinaYachi fans as well. Characters have been aged up to second year.  
> -As always, I did a very loose take on how HomeEc would be taught in a Japanese high school setting. I hope it's fun enough for you to forgive the highly possible inaccuracy and/or unlikelihood of bento being a component in Japanese high school Home Economics classes!  
> -If you like it, let me know with a comment or kudos. If you don't like it, comment anyway. You can also chat with me on twitter @meiyamie or e-mail me at psychshoujo@gmail.com.
> 
> Some glossary words:  
> onigiri - riceball  
> furikake - dried seasoning, comes in different varieties  
> kamoji - Japanese emoji

“How could you two get low scores in home economics?!” Yachi was usually very forgiving of Kageyama and Hinata’s under performance at school, so they were taken aback by her shocked reaction. They had approached her during lunch time to ask help with preparing for a major in-class project demonstration next week.

“W-w-well, I clean well,” Kageyama sulked, his ego bruished by Yachi’s raised voice, “I just don’t understand why we’re graded for playing with our food.”

“You’re not playing with your food, you’re making a balanced meal and decorative bento.” Yachi corrected.

“I make bento! The teacher doesn’t like how I make bento!” Hinata piped up, and opened his mobile phone’s gallery to show them a photo, “See, what’s wrong with it? I got barely passing scores for this part of the project.”

“Hinata, you just mixed an egg and fried rice together and put a smiley face over it with ketchup.” Yachi said. 

“Isn’t that happy and decorative enough?”

Yachi sighed, “You don’t just draw on your food to make it decorative. The whole point of the bento project is to make a healthy meal and a concept to make it look appetizing.”

“Who wouldn’t want to eat a dish like that? I would! Wouldn’t you, Kageyama?”

“Yeah.”

Yachi held her hands up.

“Alright you two.” She sighed, “With just a week away, you are going to have to excuse yourselves from practice on Saturday to review nutrition and bento basics. I’m letting Ennoshita know. It’ll be a chance for the new manager trainee to really work around the gym too.”

“Tch,” Kageyama’s face soured, “We’re skipping volleyball to play with food.”

Yachi sighed.

“This is not such a useless skill to have you know. You will want to do this well for your future girlfriend, maybe even your children.”

Hinata’s face flushed, “G-g-girlfriend?!” while Kageyama balked in disbelief. 

Yachi shook her head. Having calculus and even literature make sense to these two may be easier than helping them with bento making and appreciation.

 

“Not fair! How come Tsukki has it easy?!” Hinata complained that Saturday afternoon on the way to Yachi’s apartment, “Look! He made a Totoro bento!” He showed the instagram photo to Yachi and Kageyama. And it was impressive, with seaweed, seasoning, and an assortment of ingredients used to illustrate  a picture of Totoro holding his umbrella.

Kageyama was already in a foul mood for missing practice, and didn’t say a word. Yachi looked at it and gave a nod, “He used the time to sculpt the rice and planned the ingredients. Impressive.”

“But I can do this too, right Yachi?!”

“If you’re patient enough, yes you can.”

“I don’t like how he has the smug grin kamoji in that message," Kageyama remarked. "You know he’s teasing us, Hinata.”

“He is?! I thought he was encouraging us!”

“Idiot.”

“I am not an idiot!”

“Boys!” Yachi winced. It’s going to be a long day.

 

Yachi started with onigiri.

“Onigiri can be plain,  flavored, or have a special filling,” Yachi instructed, “And you can also use furikake to make it more colorful and appetizing. Imagine how to make rice, a really important ingredient and carb, interesting.”

“But why?” Kageyama asked, “We’re going to be eating it anyway.”

“I was very curious about eating a pink onigiri. Weren’t you? Or even a green or brown one?”

“No?”

Yachi sighed.

“You know, just roll up some baby onigiri. You can use my plastic molds for it.”

“I want to make Totoro!” Hinata declared,

“That’s quite advanced!” Yachi gave a nervous laugh, knowing that Hinata had set his mind to something, “How about a bunny? Or try making a smiley face with the seaweed?”

Yachi made a series of panda onigiri. After some encouragement, Kageyama finally allowed himself to put in a seasoning of sesame seeds, nuts, and seaweed into his dish.

“Does this look like Kageyama?” Hinata asked, showing his large palm-sized onigiri with what looked like a sulking kamoji.

“The hell!” Kageyama protested, “I do not always look like that!”

Really? Yachi was amused.

“See, you both got step one right! But Kageyama, what else can you do to make this more interesting? Try to think of a concept. Once you get a good bento concept, I’m sure you’ll get a high project score.”

“...Yachi, tell Hinata to stop making fun of me!”

“I wasn’t making fun of you, it’s a tribute!”

Yachi gave a deep sigh.

 

For their next lesson, Yachi taught them to make octopus sausages. It was easy enough, though Kageyama was still resistant to the idea of making sausages look like octopi.

“It feels like a lie. Why can’t we just serve octopi? Why do we have to serve sausages that look like octopi?”

“It’s to make it more interesting,” Yachi wondered how many times she had said that so far.

“It’s stupid.”

“Heehee,” Hinata grinned widely as he put sesame seeds onto the freshly cooked octopus sausages to give it eyes, “The sausages are watching us. Oooooh, they’re watching you, Kageyama..." He waved one decorated sausage in front of them," And as you bite one, you know the rest are scared because they’re next...”

“So they’re lying and homicidal octopi.” Kageyama decided.

If she wasn't busy with the sausage she was decorating, Yachi would have slammed her face against the kitchen counter. She wondered what it was that made women such as her see bento as an art form, while men such as them act so dense and stupid about it.

 

“You don’t have to be Tsukki,” Yachi reminded them as she arranged the vegetables and seasoning on the kitchenette counter, “Your bento doesn’t just have to be pretty or cute. It has to taste good. It has to be a balanced meal. So for the demonstration, have a carb, a protein, vegetables, and you may want to add fruits for dessert or color. So we have the onigiri and the sausage. Now, what kind of vegetables and fruit will you pair with it for a cohesive bento?” She also pulled out a few smaller containers, “You may want to look at these to help you arrange them.”

After about thirty minutes, Kageyama, to her surprise, presented her with what looked like an impressive salad. Yachi took her chopsticks and tasted it, “Huh! This is interesting!”

“Tuna salad, but with a bit of kimchi instead of a spicy mayo dressing.” Kageyama told her.

“It’s very good, but it might stink for bento.” Yachi warned.

“It’ll be on the spot, so it should be alright.”

Yachi inwardly glowed, relieved that even with someone as literal and artless as Kageyama – he finally got it. Then Kageyama continued,

“The concept will be the sausage octopi on a bed of red rice. They are all sad because they have been caught and their homes have been destroyed. The sea is red. They have lived good lives, now they must be eaten. But will they be accepted for being sausages? Or octopi?”

He was dead serious.

“Oh my god!” Hinata exclaimed, “That’s genius!”

At least one of them thinks so.

 

Hinata presented them with a creamy potato salad.

“Potato salad.” He declared, “But I mixed and matched the dressing a bit.”

Yachi and Kageyama took a bite.

Yachi had to contain her wince – it was weird, a mix of very sour and very sweet. And what was that peppery flavor that suddenly surged at the end of it?

“What did you put in your potato salad?” Yachi asked meekly.

“Potato, mayo, pineapple, three kinds of vinegar, garnish, and whatever else I felt like.”

Yachi poured all of them water, and glugged hers down. Kageyama excused himself to go to the toilet.

“Just a thought, Hinata...less can be more. Much, much, much more.” Yachi croaked.

 

For that one afternoon, Yachi did what she could. As they cleaned up and the boys said their goodbyes, Yachi was sure that they understood some concepts a little better than when they talked yesterday. She knew from living with a single  working Mom that not everyone had a knack for the kitchen. It was tough enough to make a good meal, what more one that looked appetizing? Especially with boys as straightforward as Kageyama and Hinata?

 

“How was the demonstration?” Yachi asked when she saw them at practice the following week, “Did you do well?”

Kageyama suddenly looked shy, which is an unusual look for him, Yachi realized. She watched as he picked up his phone and showed it to Yachi.

“I realized that when you put bacon together it looks like a face. So I made the face of a titan from Attack on Titan. And I chopped up a hard-boiled egg to look like eyes. Teacher was surprised.”

“Wow, Kageyama. You got it! That’s how bento should be!”

“Would you eat it?” Kageyama asked her.

Honestly, Yachi would be freaked out by a grotesque face staring up at her as she lifts the bento lid. But she won’t tell Kageyama that.

“Yeah. Yeah, I would.” But please don’t make me, she thought.

 

She checked on Hinata afterwards.

“I passed, but it wasn’t a high score.” Hinata pouted, and took out his phone to show her, “Look, I rolled the onigiri to look like the team!”

Yachi’s eyes lit up. “That’s really cute, Hinata! So why weren’t you given a high score?”

“I tried this special flavor for the onigiri filling... so I put soy sauce over some pickles, and I just added whatever looked interesting to me. Then I realized that I put salt when I meant to put in sugar. And that was a lot of salt. Teacher liked that I had heart in my bento though.”

 

When Hinata and Kageyama or one of them, swung by her desk during lunch, it would usually be to ask questions about schoolwork or practice. Sometimes they would eat together with other friends from the team or at school.

So Yachi was not surprised that Hinata visited her desk. She was surprised however, when he presented her with a wrapped bento box.

“Thanks for helping us out, Yachi. And this time, I didn’t experiment. I looked up some recipes on youtube, so the flavors shouldn’t be as shocking as they used to be. Have a good lunch.”

He bowed, and left before Yachi could even thank him.

She braced herself as she undid the cloth wrapping, and lifted the lid. She smiled. The rice was balled up, and decorated with furikake to bring out the colors and shape of a volleyball. There was what looked like a fried cordon bleu, with a green salad set to the side, and an individually-wrapped chocolate bar. Yachi picked up the chopsticks that went with it, and took her first bite.

And it was pretty good! Hinata really did put thought into it!

She was soon surprised that she had finished it that quickly. It was that good, and she was sure that Hinata didn’t just buy this off a store shelf.

 

Hinata received a message at the tail end of lunch, “Yum! Good job!” Read the message from Yachi, with a very happy kamoji.

Hinata smiled to himself as he texted a thank you message in return.

Making a good-looking and delicious bento is hard, but doing it for someone you care for made it easier to manage, and fun.


End file.
